


The Tin Box Excuse

by Lilithisbitter



Series: Come at Once if Convenient Fanfiction Collection [4]
Category: Murder by Decree (1979), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Anal Fingering, Anal Sex, Challenge Response, Come at Once Challenge, M/M, Oral Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-24
Updated: 2014-06-24
Packaged: 2018-02-06 00:04:46
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,137
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1837051
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lilithisbitter/pseuds/Lilithisbitter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Watson has no excuse for his behavior.  All he can do is commit it to paper and let history be the judge of his actions.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Tin Box Excuse

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Come at Once, If Convenient for the prompt: put that thing back where it came from or so help me by Mistyzeo.

I have no excuse for my behaviour. Really, I do believe I have gone mad. I find myself having to commit this account to paper as to cement its very existence in the fabric of my mind. But the events have happened as such and there is no way around them. I feel the need to endlessly turn over them like a hen turns over her egg and may in fact turn over them until the end of my lifespan.

Holmes on the other hand seems to feel nothing. Why should he? Sentiment comes on awkwardly to one such as he. I saw it on rare occasion, such as when we were on the case I have called Murder by Decree. The crown will not allow me to publish that one for various reasons. But if you had seen Holmes on that case as I did, you would not have seen the calculating machine that I have dismissed him as. You would have seen a man who could be brought to tears as easily as any on of us.

That man was showing up little now. True, Holmes smiled as readily as any, but any sentiment on his part was buried. For my marriage with Mary Morstan was fast approaching. Oh, he loved Mary as much as I did and gave the marriage his blessing. But there was a certain strain to it. It wasn't due to concept of marriage itself. For all his insistence to contrary, he was a romantic at heart.

If anything, it was simply it was my marriage that vexed him. I asked him if it was to do with Mary. But no. He shook his head. “Mary is an amazing woman and you two deserve the best. You really do.”

“But,” I pressed on. There had to be a but, a however... anything. Anything at all he disliked about Mary. “But... what else?”

“Are you looking for something?” he asked after a long pause in which he lit his pipe, smoking thoughtfully. “Because in my personal opinion-”

“Sod your personal opinion!” I snapped. “Sod to Hades, Sherlock.”

After another puff, he laid the pipe aside after puffing out an impressive smoke ring. “You're looking for an excuse... John.” He said my given name with a flat affect, cool and calm as ever. “You've got doubts. As I said before, marriage is the fly in the ointment and the very distraction to my very being. Like you, I have emotions. They do emerge on occasion and I do find myself vexed by them. Remember my mind attic?”

“How could I not?” I said, still thinking him a daft fool to need to know my middle name over the popular literature. 

Our argument went as thus. Said I “But what if one was murdered in such a way as was portrayed in a penny dreadful.”

“Pish-posh,” replied he, “I read penny dreadfuls by the armful. But unless there is a murder in philosophy, I don't see the point. Either way, if such a thing happened, I would read the book, memorise the facts as long as it took or consult Mycroft.”

So endeth the conversation. 

“Well,” said Holmes, still basking in his aura of being, “Generally I consider feelings to be the forgotten summer home one visits when there is a threat of plague in the city. Feelings are in the corner of the summer home.” He paused and thought for a moment. “So while they exist, as it happens I understand very little about them. I'd rather they be got very far away, so help me.”

“Really?” I asked, approaching. “I could think of nothing quite lonelier than an lifetime such as that.” I laid my hand upon his wrist, where I could feel his pulse flutter quickly. “If you truly believe that, you might as well retire and farm bees.”

“Apiarist,” he corrected, although his breath caught in his throat as my fingers ran up his arm, rucking up the sleeves of his shirt and dressing gown in my wake, my nails leaving brief pink-red trails. “What are you doing, Watson?”

“Testing for absence of feelings.”

There was a brief pause and he finally spoke, “I thought we were dealing with your feeling about Mary.”

I smiled and exchanged lips and tongue for fingers. He shivered much to my own internal delight. “On the contrary, Holmes. We're testing you for feelings. You said feelings to you are things to be got rid. Get them away or so help you God.”

“I am an Atheist, as rational as any man.” His breath hitched again as I sucked a love bruise into the crook of his arm. “Oh God, Watson... you know I am sensitive there.”

I blew on the mark and thrilled in the noises his mouth produced as my hands ventured to the fastening of his trousers. “Sensitive is a feeling,” I half-teased, as my fingers plucked at the buttons.

“Sensitive is a sensation,” he countered, his pale eyes challenging, smirk on his face crooked as ever.

With a skill honed over three continents and with all genders, I fastened my mouth over his clothed member and hummed every song he had kept me awake with at night. The results were immediate and delightful. He hardened at once and bucked into my mouth. My hands pinned his hips down and I heard his grunt of frustration as I took my mouth of way.

“So what feeling is this?” I asked.

He growled impatiently and tried to force my head back down into his lap. I slapped knuckles each time. He finally gave up. Holmes stared at me. I stared back. “You know what it is,” he at last whinged. “You damned well know what it is.”

“Of course. The question is do you?”

Holmes hissed both out of lust and impatience. “Dammit,” I heard him say and I almost took pity upon him. Almost. “Must I?”

“You must,” I insisted, running a finger along his still clothed length for emphasise. 

“Again damn you,” he said, “It is lust, which I hardly feel qualifies as an emotion. It is the vestiges of an emotion, the very mockery of an emotion and Gott im Himmel, if you don't put your mouth to work, I shall go mad and die.”

As I freed his most erect and excellent (I feel Holmes will mock me for being flowery here, but he may mock away, it is rather nice) member from his trousers, I resisted the urge to smirk. “You shall do no such thing, Holmes, although I hear shame is fatal in several parts of the world.”

I believe he was about to doubt the fatality of shame, but any thought was justfully and rightfully taken away by creative use of my lips and tongue to his foreskin. What was replaced was that animalistic creature we rightfully call lust and with just cause. Holmes writhed under the loving work of my tongue and I thrilled in every cry as his hands buried themselves in my hand hair and he cried aloud to the god he upon many occasion claimed not to believe one wit in. 

It entered my mind before I could take it back and I whispered in his ear as soon as those words entered my throat. I that moment I didn't want to take it back and even now I'm not sure. Such thoughts are against the laws of man and God, but I ask you, how can something between two consenting loving people be anything pure? I understand my words may go unread, I flatter myself in thinking myself anything more than a passing fancy, but maybe perhaps after we pass this realm, someone might read these words and see my feels read true.

Saying this I can feel comfortable saying this. “Were you a woman, I would take you here.”

Holmes laughed at my sentence. “Were I woman? John, two men may lie together as close in flesh as a man and woman. The same as any two women.” He paused and wiped a merry tear from his eye in amusement, rather merry for a man with his prick hanging erect from his trousers and pants. “I take your experiences with men only extends with flirting. Society of course finds that acceptable. Everything but the act as they say.” He waved his hand. “Never you mind. Victor and I had many a fond fumble when we were supposed to be studying.”

“Why am I not surprised by Victor?” I muttered as he made short work of our clothes.

“The proper question is my dear John Hamish Watson,” said he, “When are you not surprised by me?”

He captured my lips with a laugh. Sherlock Holmes, genius he may be, gives himself as well myself too much credit. Of course I find myself forever surprised by Holmes and his world. If that were not that case, I would be daft to keep such company as he. It it would not be boredom, no, it would be overwhelming by the ocean of a man that one could never ever match.

“Thank you though,” he added, “For having patience with me.” We leaned back into his armchair, a bottle of oil at the ready. “It's been a while since my last. Be gentle, this isn't like being with a woman.”

“I will,” I promised as I coated my fingers and eased them in.

Instantly he hissed in pain. “I said that this isn't like being with a woman, John. They naturally come with something to make it easy.”

“Lubrication,” I supplied.

“Exactly,” Holmes sniffed, grey eyes narrowing. He bit into his weighted scarf in slight pain. “John, if you've made me bleed, you won't hear the end of this.”

I eased my fingers out and inspected them. There was no blood. I showed them to Holmes for his own comfort. “See, no blood.”

“I see,” he said, craning his neck to peer at my hand. “Proceed good doctor and for God's sake, one finger at a time.”

Perhaps my nerves were rattled by his outcry of pain or I didn't want to hurt him, either way, Holmes decided I was going to slow for his needs. “Allow me,” he said and before I could utter another word, his fingers were slithering in beside by mine, slick with oil, thinner, but twice as long and twice as clever. “We all shall die of old age at rate you're going, so allow me that pleasure.” He moved our fingers and before I knew it, Holmes had slid his way down my own erection until his bum neatly came in contact with my pubic hair. A half-hiss, half-moan escaped his mouth. “Oh yes... it has been a while.”

“Are you okay? I can get out.”

His hands went to my side. “More than okay, John. Better than okay. The only thing I want you to get is off.”

Holmes's hips rolled and his muscles contracted around my cock in such a way that I had no way of knowing a man's inner passage could be. It was different than a woman and I can only image what it must have been for Sherlock. My past lady loves have having their nipples sucked and I imagined it must be the same for a man, so I applied my own mouth to Holmes's. He keened in pleasure. I never wanted it to end.

There was he and I and I and he and we were one and the world could go to hell in that moment...

And that moment ended... and there was Mary who I was going to marry in the summer. And Holmes with semen drying on his belly and mine, blinking owlishly. “Apologies,” said he, though he had nothing to apologise for. 

“What for?” I said emptily. 

“For being born in this time. Were it a different time, John. Were it that I was able to love you as Mary openly loves you and we could fear it being no crime.” He lit his pipe and puffed it thoughtfully. “It exists. We pretend it doesn't, but it exists behind closed doors and in alleys and in brothels and everywhere they stamp it out.”

“What do I do?”

Holmes smiled. “You know the answer. Go to Mary. Let her love you as I cannot.”

We said no more on the subject. He doesn't want to bring it up again. He doesn't want me to either. So I will put this in my box and seal it it. They will debate this story. Call it a sham work of someone who wants to decry my name. But I don't care as long as one person reads this and knows that Sherlock Holmes loved and was loved in return.


End file.
